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Banana, by Dan Koeppel
You will never, ever find a seed in a supermarket banana. That is because the fruit is grown, basically, by cloning...Every banana we eat is a genetic twin of every other.
It turns out, by the way, that the world's supply of Cavendish bananas -- the ones we eat -- is endangered by disease (more here) and many experts believe the entire strain will vanish. Most other banana strains are much harder to cultivate and transport on a large scale, so enjoy your bananas while you can. The previous and supposedly tastier major strain of banana -- Gros Michel -- is already gone and had disappeared by the 1950s, again due to disease. Today, European opposition to GMO is one factor discouraging progress in developing a substitute and more robust banana crop.
I liked this bit:
"Uganda doesn't endure famine, and to a great extent that is because of bananas," said Joseph Mukibi...
And finally:
Most horrifying of all to Americans, the Indian banana is used as a substitute for tomatoes in ketchup.
I've grown tired of single topic foodstuff books, as they are now an overmined and overrated genre. But Dan Koeppel's Banana: The Fate of the Fruit that Changed the World is one of the best of its kind. It is a seamless integration of politics, economics, history, biology, and foodie wisdom. Here is one review of the book. Here is Dan's one-post banana blog.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on January 22, 2008 at 07:07 AM in Books, Food and Drink | Permalink
Comments
Well "European opposition to GMO" is in line with the thinking that would have prevented this problem in the first place. But i suppose only governments are ever capable of short-term thinking and unintended consequences...
Posted by: yoyo at Jan 22, 2008 7:28:20 AM
Amazing what you can conjure by choice of vocabulary. The bananas we eat propagate asexually by offshoots from the plant which are then separated and planted elsewhere.
Thus they are genetically identical. They are clones.
However, these days the word clone seems to be popularly understood as "having been done in a laboratory by DNA manipulation". This is not the case with bananas. Virtually every home gardener knows how to propagate by dividing a plant clump into smaller clumps. ...cloning.
Posted by: JRip at Jan 22, 2008 8:04:18 AM
How would European opposition to GMO have prevented seedless bananas? Surely they are totally unrelated? Maybe the aliens taught the Egyptians genetic engineering and they used it to create seedless bananas? Or are Europeans opposed to cultivation as well?
Posted by: Cliff at Jan 22, 2008 8:26:48 AM
Duh. Huge agricultural monocultures are inherently prone to disease and in the long term unsustainable, even in the face of heroic technological efforts.
Posted by: Matt H at Jan 22, 2008 9:13:02 AM
...yeah, let's be clear here...every cultivar is a 'clone', because they all exist via cuttings. It's how you get trees that tend more towards structurally sound/fruit producing/specific color/etc.
virtually every tree you see planted in a commercial landscape (not growing naturally) is a cultivar: it's not just an oak, it's a live oak...it's not just a live oak, it's a quercus virginiana 'millenium' or 'hightower' or some other sort of variety.
Intriguing, however, that apparently the only commercial cultivar is the 'cavendish'...given my understanding of economics, however, as the supply dwindles due to disease or other factors, there will be more incentive to propogate a different plant via a wild source. (all you do to 'clone' a plant is clip off a piece of it, stick it in rooting source material, make sure it's kept nice and wet, and it will grow roots. VOILA! Clone!)
Posted by: shawn at Jan 22, 2008 9:39:44 AM
To clarify "yoyo's" comment. Opposition to GMO is largely concerned with losing varieties of food crops - exactly what the article pointed out for 2 strains of bananas. The worry that there will be no alternative wild sources left to turn to when one disease wipes out the entire world's supply of say, bananas, is why people are scared of GMO's long term effects. As in your investment portfolio, diversity is good.
I find it discouraging when economists rail against organic foods as inefficient, and only valuable as a lifestyle based niche marketing tool. That seems to be quite a "short term" view to me.
Posted by: Jeff MN at Jan 22, 2008 11:05:29 AM
This book title is hilarious. Do all book titles these days have to be "(Blank): the trivial little (blank) that changed the World" ?
Posted by: Klug at Jan 22, 2008 11:08:33 AM
Sort of off topic but are there supermarkets out there that sell *ripe* bananas? Everyone I've been to sells 'em green. This is like self-checkout: I'm doing unpaid labor for the supermarket.
Posted by: BlogReader at Jan 22, 2008 11:35:24 AM
A simplistic view of two types of GMO research:
1. Old style (Euro style). Perform many breedings. Grow out the results. Observe and test the results. Select and propagate the "winners". This can be said to be "natural". Goals may take many cycles (years) to achieve.
2. Later Old-Style. Do the breedings in the presence of agents (chemicals or conditions) that encourage the appearance of variations (variants).
3. New style - directly manipulate the DNA. Splicing in stuff from other species and/or creating little bits in the lab and splicing them in. Trying to achieve a goal in a single step.
Posted by: JRip at Jan 22, 2008 11:40:09 AM
I agree with jrip and others that by saying clone you conjure up something different than cultivating clippings. I am against GMO. GMO is not the way to biological diversity that will prevent disease. We should have learned something from the Potato Famine. Only having one variety of a type of plant is a problem we should avoid, and we should solve it naturally by planting different types of the same plant- not with gmo.
Posted by: Daniel at Jan 22, 2008 1:50:17 PM
Blogreader:
Depends what you mean by "ripe." Probably no supermarkets sell vine-ripened bananas, but bananas ripen pretty darn well off the vine. I am incredulous that you have not seen yellow bananas sold in a supermarket. In fact, in some supermarkets, bananas that are completely ripe (with a few brown spots here and there) are sold at a discount to the green variety. The advantage to buying the green ones and allowing them to ripen at home is to avoid bruising, and as long as you time you banana purchases, you are no doing any extra labor (the most recent purchase will ripen as you are finishing the last of the previous lot).
Posted by: Michael at Jan 22, 2008 2:00:22 PM
You may have to revise the first chapter of your book, Dr. Cowen. Talk about scarcity!
Posted by: NL at Jan 22, 2008 3:20:47 PM
Hi there - I'm the author of "Banana." Thanks for the mention. I would like to point out that I have more than a one-post blog: I provide information about bananas and my book to wretched excess at www.bananabook.org.
Posted by: Dan Koeppel at Jan 22, 2008 8:03:08 PM
Sorry, but this review is wrong in some aspects, and probably the book as well.
I live in Brazil, and over here we don't have just one strain at all. There's like a dozen diferent kinds of bananas, with different tastes, prices and sizes. You banana lovers really should try someday.
There's even an idiomatic expression: "a preço de banana" that means something is very cheap, with banana's price.
Here are some of the varieties that you can find in any half-decent supermarket:
Banana Nanica (most common - big and not very tasty)
Banana Ouro ("golden" smaller, sweeter, pricier)
Banana Prata ("Silvery" one of my favourites; not so sweet)
Banana Terra (Leaves some aftertaste in you mouth. Good for cooking)
Banana Maça (Tastes Like Apples)
Really, he should have read more abou bananas before writing on the subject.
Posted by: Gabriel at Jan 22, 2008 8:04:55 PM
Gabriel is right - there are lots of other banana cultivars, in Brazil and elsewhere. But - in addition to being susceptible to the same diseases, even across cultivars (since there's so much genetic sameness between these varieties -Brazilian bananas are not suitable for overseas export. That's because they don't possess the proper ripening characteristics and resistance to damage that Cavendish - and pretty much only Cavendish - bananas do. I have been to Brazil, and I have tasted Brazil's wonderful bananas. If you want to do the same, you have to go to Brazil, as well.
Posted by: Dan Koeppel at Jan 22, 2008 8:08:47 PM
Australia also has more than one sort of banana. I grew up regarding the big bananas (Cavendish) as being a more exotic sort.
I have never seen any that grow on a vine though, (Michael 2:00:22 pm)
Posted by: doctorpat at Jan 22, 2008 8:34:48 PM
Alarmism... we has it.
No need for banana panic. Bananas are a thoroughly modern phenomenon, for those living in temperate climates. When they first appeared on the streets of New York City in the 1890s they sold for 25 cents apiece. Plug that into any inflation calculator and see how that compares to prices today.
Growing up in Homestead FL (south of Miami) the bananas growing over our septic tank drainfield were Dwarf Cavendish. Shorter than the commercial variety, with thinner peels, but much tastier. Incredibly productive in an 8-foot tree.
Questions about "vine-ripe" bananas display a lamentable ignorance of banana culture. Dude, backpack Guatemala, and this time pay attention, OK?
There are hundreds of varieties of bananas. If one should come up short, others will fill in. No need to worry about losing your favorite healthy tropical snack!
Chill???
Posted by: Bob Knaus at Jan 22, 2008 8:59:04 PM
I recall finding a seed in one of my bananas not too many years ago. I don't recall where I got it. Maybe in Europe? Anybody else with this experience?
Posted by: ryan at Jan 22, 2008 11:51:42 PM
Brazilian bananas are some of the world's best, Gabriel is correct to point that out. But they are not easy enough to grow and transport to take over world markets, and most of you have never ever eaten one and never will. That's sad. The bananas you get in the U.S. are strictly second-rate. Yana for instance was shocked when she had her first banana in Brazil.
Posted by: Tyler Cowen at Jan 23, 2008 7:17:58 AM
Most produce in the US is (now) strictly second-rate. Travel *anywhere* else in the world and you will very quickly realize this.
Posted by: meter at Jan 23, 2008 12:18:52 PM
Most produce in the US is (now) strictly second-rate. Travel *anywhere* else in the world and you will very quickly realize this.
Are you buying your produce at 7-11 or something? Or are you buying your produce at an overpriced co-op and need to justify the expense? I have traveled to many different *anywhere*s, and have found no significant differences between the produce that wasn't explainable by climate or region.
If you went to the supermarket, and purchased a bunch of identical tomatos, and then seperated then and then told people that one pile is "organic European-grown" tomatos, and the other pile "factory-farming" tomatos, people would naturally say the organic European ones are better, because of course "organic" is better and Europeans are wise and sophisticated.
But that doesn't really mean anything except that normal produce has no marketing machine and doesn't have built in barriers to mass-consumption (thus, making it an item of conspicuous consumption).
Posted by: Rex Rhino at Jan 23, 2008 1:58:06 PM
No, that was not a comment on marketing or psychology, but based on real-life experience.
Eat a tomato bought from a supermarket here. Eat a tomato bought from a supermarket in Israel. Or Egypt. Or Spain. Compare.
I don't mean to trample all over your jingoistic preconceptions, but it really is true that our produce is not good. Not good at all.
Posted by: meter at Jan 23, 2008 2:34:38 PM
I've also had bananas with seeds in them. But they were picked wild in the bush during a hike.
(Very dry and not recommended actually, probably taste like American bananas ;)
Posted by: doctorpat at Jan 23, 2008 10:19:00 PM
Dan, Sorry to misjudge you; It´s tempting to take a book by it´s review. I promise I´ll take a look at it asap.
It´s this thing with the Internets. You never know who might read your thing.
Best of luck,
Gabriel
Posted by: Gabriel at Jan 24, 2008 7:59:14 AM
I have not read the book mentioned in the post. However, I have read "Jungle capitalists : a story of globalisation, greed and revolution" by Peter Chapman. Chapman was the reporter for the Financial Times in Latin America.The book is an wonderful read. It covers the role United Fruit played in making banana a household fruit in the rich countries. The narrative is tied with globalization, gun-boat diplomacy and the idea of banana republic. The book is an amazing expose of a powerful multinational corporation.
Posted by: Asif Dowla at Jan 24, 2008 2:46:07 PM
Thank you, Asif, for your kind compliments. As you suggest the book is predominantly about the United Fruit Company and how it pioneered the activities of multinational corporations today. It comes out in the US on February 7 under the title 'Bananas: How the United Fruit Company Shaped the World'.
With best wishes to all
Peter Chapman, London
Posted by: Peter Chapman at Jan 27, 2008 2:38:55 PM
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